The 'Creepy' app

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The name of this app is 'Creepy'..! Don't think it as a foolish name for an app, because this one is really creepy..!!

In today's world, we live more in the digital world than in the real world. For us, our 'avatar' is more important than our real selves. Its a harsh fact but we have to admit it.

So living in this digital world, we leave out loads n loads of our personal information accessible to anyone on the internet. We do not think it as a 'no biggie', but you would be amazed or horrified to be more precise, to know how these small 'no biggie' details can be used against you...!

This app for desktop computers called 'Creepy' is a “geo-location information aggregator”. i.e, using a this a person can know where all the places you had been and can hence easily find out the place where you would likely to be..!

Now, you might be going "oh shit..!!"..:) How does it do that..??


Well, we constantly upload pictures and share them with the world. From these pics, its possible to extract geo-location information .......

• tweets have geolocations. ....
• Coordinates when tweet was posted from mobile device
• Place (geographical name) derived from users ip when posting on twitter's web interface. Place gets translated into coordinates using geonames.com
• Bounding Box derived from users ip when posting on twitter's web interface.The less accurate source , a corner of the bounding box is selected randomly.
• Geolocation information accessible through image hosting services API
• EXIF tags from the photos posted.

• So 'Creepy' sniffs all these and much more details from the web and presents it in a map marking all the locations your target has been hence making it easy to find out the places you frequently visit, the places you likely to be found..!

If you are stalking somebody, then its a must have app..:p You can download it here.. http://ilektrojohn.github.com/creepy/



To prevent 'creepy' from stalk you, some simple tips...

• better not to reveal too much of your personal details.
• do not post anything that you dont want others to know.
• Don't try to be in a 'limbo' when there is so much on the real world.

2022 Qatar world cup

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Hey.... Don't get confused...! I have not changed by blog topics from technology to Sports..:) There is something amazing about 2022 World cup in Qatar referring to the technology going to be used.
Its the ' Man-made clouds to shade the stadium'..!!!!

The world cup will be in months of June and July. Do you know the temperature in those months in Qatar..?? Its freakin 41 degree Celsius (106 F )...!! Sometimes, it goes as high as 50 degree Celsius (122 F)...!! Can you imagine running behind a ball in the open ground with the sun determined to drain out every drop of water in your body..!?!?

So a team of scientists from the Qatar University have taken a high-tech approach to solve the problem. They are going to create some artificial clouds and let them float above the stadium hence provide shade for both players and fans ..!!

The team is lead by Dr Saul Abdul Ghani, Head of the Mechanical and Industrial Engineering Department at QU. "The "clouds"......

• would be made from a lightweight carbon structure carrying a giant envelope of material containing helium gas.
  
• It would also feature solar panels on its upper surface to power engines that allow the cloud to be moved via remote control.
• The system would cost around US$500,000.

The stadium to built for the world cup includes all types of cooling technologies available and capable of reducing the temperature inside by up to 20 degree Celsius.

Now we get the doubt as, why cant they move the world cup to a cooler months like January ..??? I don't know ...'They just CAN'T "...!!!

One - Touch Disaster alert app

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'Earthquake, Tsunami and nuclear crisis' ....what a combination...!! Japan is experiencing the most horrific, darkest nightmare ever possible. In such disasters, rescuing people is a very challenging task, when they don't know where exactly the person is trapped under that enormous rubble.


So with an intention of helping people under such situation, researchers from Tiwan have released a new mobile app called Mobile Savior.

The app can transmit the location of users trapped under the rubble, to any number of people with one single touch...! The app sends out the latitude and longitude co-ordinates of the people stranded in the disaster areas.

The mind behind the app, Liang Chih-hsiung, assistant professor of multimedia and gaming development at Lunghwa University of Science and Technology says that "This project was my idea, because Taiwan has experienced earthquakes and mudslides where we can't find people, With one touch, location data can get out, and maybe that would save your life. If you were crushed but still alive, someone can still find you."

The new app is available for download for $2.99 in English, Chinese or Japanese.

Parellel Universe

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Am not an expert in neither physics nor string theory, but I find these ideas and theories highly fascinating. These ideas look very interesting when we do not go deep into it. like, derivations or proofs....:) Oh.. you want some proof for that...?? Here it is,

The following are the mathematical topics a person has to be familiar with if he wants to learn String theory,

• Real analysis
• Complex analysis
• Group theory
• Differential geometry
• Lie groups
• Differential forms
• Homology
• Cohomology
• Homotopy
• Fiber bundles
• Characteristic classes
• Index theorems
• Supersymmetry and supergravity

Need more.... below is just a piece of derivation in string theory...


Looks like we are going to be in deep shit as we go deeper n deeper right...??..:p

So lets all not worry about those n enjoy the little we know.... below videos make these concepts so simple...!! But more importantly, they take you to a different world...!! Enjoy.... (FYI there are 5 parts of the video)

10th dimension

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As I mentioned in my previous post Imagining the dimensions higher than 4 looks like impossible right..? But its possible...! To be honest with you, I really have no idea how to write an article about the higher dimensions when myself is stuck imagining 5th dimensions...! So, as would every one would do, I went on exploring about the topic. Seriously, it made me more confused...!! The following is a paragraph which I got on a website, it goes,

The first four are the ones we all know and love: Three dimensions for space and one dimension for time.
The other 6 are called 'internal degrees of freedom' and are related to the number of fundamental symmetries present in the physical world at the quantum scale. The equations that physicists work with require these additional dimensions so that new symmetries can be defined that allow physicists to understand physical relationships between the various particle families. They think these are actual, real dimensions to the physical world, only that they are now 'compact' and have finite sizes unlike our 4 dimensions of space and time which seem almost to be infinite in size. Each point in 4 dimensional space-time has another 6 dimensions attached to it which 'particles and forces' can use as extra degrees of freedom to define themselves and how they will interact with each other. Do not confuse them with 'hyperspace' because the particles do not actually 'move' along these other dimensions. They are not 'spatial' dimensions, but are as unlike space and time as time is unlike space!
I didn't understand a word...:p But I found this great video on youtube, which explains it beautifully, check it out...

String theory - Prepare to be amazed and confused..!

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String theory, probably is the hottest thing in the world of physics. Its the most famous idea in the modern physics at the same time, damn confusing..!

Am not going to give you detailed article about the theory, or teach you any derivations..:p but am just give you trailer of the theory, which would tickle your imagination and make you explore about it more.

FYI, this idea will question everything you know and learned till now......So according to the theory,

The idea or the theory starts by saying that the fundamental particles we know are NOT point like dots but made of tiny strings...! These strings are so tiny that no instruments of ours can show it.

We are familiar with 1 dimension, 2D and 3D but string theory predicts the existance of 10 dimensions...!! (I know its hard to imgine even the 4D, but how could we even possible think of 10th dimension...?? I will tell a little about it in the next post... HERE....)

Now the concept of 'universe', its old..! its time for 'multiverse'...!! that's right, according to the String theory, there exist not one but many parallel universes..!! String theory describes 10⁵⁰⁰ separate universes, with different constants of nature and even different laws of physics. This parallel universe concept is really mindblowing..! Will tell you a little more about it HERE....

Another one of string theory's most dramatic predictions is that we should find cosmic strings. These would be billions of light years long, thinner than a proton and spectacularly dense. As they could reveal themselves in images of distant galaxies, the search is on.

So the physicists say all the particles in the universe are made of tiny strings and how they interact each other is through the vibrations of these strings. Hence they think the whole universe we live in, as a symphony...! Though the idea is revolutionary, and so beautiful, the problem physicists facing is while proving the theory.

Over many many years the dream of scientists to give 'the theory of everything' , a theory that would explain every phenomena in the universe. Many believe that the String Theory is the theory of everything. Is it true...?? Will they able to prove it..?? Lets wait n see..:)

Google Body Browser

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Do you like Google Earth ? then you will love Google Body browser. For all those who are into medical and anatomy, I think its a dream come true.

Google Body browser is a very interesting Google earth styled WebGl application which lets you navigate through out the human body making you know and learn every inch of it.

To experience Google Body browser, you DO NOT require Flash, Java, or any other plugins..!! All you need is a WebGl enabled browser. following browsers have WebGl enabled...
Chrome 9 Beta, Firefox 4 beta, Webkit Nighty

Its a great tool for all those medical students out there and also to every other human being as I think everybody should know about our own body. Google has made it easy, interactive and interesting like never before. Enjoy the app HERE

Know more about it in the video below........

Telepathy is not science fiction ...!

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Telepathy ( communicating with our thoughts ) is indeed a dream technology. Whenever I saw those magic shows where the magician lifts a person or things with his mind, I used to think, it would be so cool if those were real and not illusions. But we humans are so intelligent, that we are making everything possible which was once impossible.

Personally, am a big fan of TED. Just watch the demo of this brilliant technology in the TED video below, and you will understand everything you need to know about this brain computer interface technology.

Solving Avatar - The mystery of 'I'

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Who haven't watch James Cameron's Avatar....? A brilliant movie with never before seen sci-fi technologies... Well, the Swiss Researchers are quite hopeful to make some of those flashy technologies, a reality...!

In the movie, the scientists use Na'vi(aliens)-human hybrid bodies called avatars that are operated via mental link by genetically matched humans. There the humans are linked to those bodies in such way that they feel that body as their own. i.e, self-consciousness. You know, that feeling of being in or owning our body is the fundamental human experience. Have you ever wondered where does it originate..? or how or why we feel that way...? That's what researchers are trying to figure out.

By combining techniques from cognitive science with those of Virtual Reality (VR) and brain imaging, Professor Olaf Blanke, a neurologist with the Brain Mind Institute at EPFL and the Department of Neurology at the University of Geneva in Switzerland and his team are zeroing on the first experimental, data-driven approach to understanding self-consciousness.

Now let me make a little bit clear for you about what is its connection to 'Avatar' and what exactly did they do in their experiment.....

The people who volunteered for the experiment, were fitted with an electrode-studded skullcap to monitor brain activity and exposed to different digital, 3D environments through a head-mounted stereoscopic visor or projections on a large screen. They immersed these people into the body of an 'avatar' or virtual human via virtual reality settings.

Then the team, tried to dig out the most fundamental questions with those people such as, "Where am I localized in space" and "What is my body?" by physically touching their real-life volunteers either in or out of sync with the avatar.They even swapped perspectives from first to third person and put their male subjects inside female avatars, at the same time measuring each of their brain activities.

Why they are doing it...?? You may not be aware but there are cases in neurological patients reporting out-of-body experiences. And the data show marked changes in the response of the brain's temporo-parietal and frontal regions -- the parts of the brain responsible for integrating touch and vision into a coherent perception.The researchers are are trying to compare the experimental results with those case studies.

But finding the basic brain response to VR is just beginning.In the next step, the researchers are going to induce stronger illusions of the self by altering signals of balance and limb position -- two very powerful bodily cues.Once subjects can no longer distinguish between the real and the virtual self, cognitive science and brain imaging may be able to answer all the questions about self-consciousness and there by solving the mystery of 'I'.

Cracking this mystery, could.....

• lead to advances in the fields of touch and balance perception
• great advancements in the fields of robotics and virtual reality.
• neuro-rehabilitation and pain treatments.
• contribute to the understanding of neurological and psychiatric disease.

Lets hope the future it make the future better.

How much information is there in the World..?

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"Hey .. I have 500Gb of movies in my pc..!", "Hey I have a collection of more than 1000 books at my home..!" .....so now, a single person has 5ooGb of information only of movies...! Just hold that thought and think how much information would be there in the whole world...?!? Don't tell me its impossible to calculate, because a study appearing on Feb 10 in Science Express calculates the World's total technological capacity.How much information humankind is able to store,communicate and compute.

So lets find out what's the study say.... Prepare yourself for some mind blowing facts ..!!

• Looking at both digital memory and analog devices, the researchers calculate that humankind is able to store at least 295 exabytes of information. And FYI, exabyte is the number with 20 zeros in it..!!

In other words, if a single star is a bit of information, that's a galaxy of information for every person in the world. That's 315 times the number of grains of sand in the world. But it's still less than one percent of the information that is stored in all the DNA molecules of a human being.

• 2002 could be considered the beginning of the digital age, the first year worldwide digital storage capacity overtook total analog capacity. As of 2007, almost 94 percent of our memory is in digital form.
• In 2007, humankind successfully sent 1.9 zettabytes of information through broadcast technology such as televisions and GPS. That's equivalent to every person in the world reading 174 newspapers every day.
• On two-way communications technology, such as cell phones, humankind shared 65 exabytes of information through telecommunications in 2007, the equivalent of every person in the world communicating the contents of six newspapers every day.
• In 2007, all the general-purpose computers in the world computed 6.4 x 10^18 instructions per second, in the same general order of magnitude as the number of nerve impulses executed by a single human brain. Doing these instructions by hand would take 2,200 times the period since the Big Bang.
• From 1986 to 2007, the period of time examined in the study, worldwide computing capacity grew 58 percent a year, ten times faster than the United States' GDP.
• Telecommunications grew 28 percent annually, and storage capacity grew 23 percent a year.

The lead author Martin Hilbert of the USC Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism says, "These numbers are impressive, but still miniscule compared to the order of magnitude at which nature handles information.Compared to nature, we are but humble apprentices. However, while the natural world is mind-boggling in its size, it remains fairly constant. In contrast, the world's technological information processing capacities are growing at exponential rates."

Touch screens - What do you know..?

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Touch screens nowadays are becoming so common that every gadget in the world is going touch screen. Every person in his day to day life will interact with something which is touch screen. But have you ever wondered what these touch screens are made of..? How do they work..? What's the technology behind it.?

Many people don't know about these. After you finish reading this, you will be amazed by the technology and think of it as a miracle..!

I don't think defining 'touch screen' is necessary as you know what it means. you can easily write,navigate,open windows etc with touch screen. But think of this, ' within fraction of second your touch is your touch is translated into control commands that a computer understands'..! but how..??

To know that, lets look at different type of touch screens.

1. Capacitive touch screens : Its a wafer thin electrode made of ITO ( indium tin oxide) coated below glass. In such screens, an electrical field is generated on the surface of the screen. That field is disrupted by the user's touch, and electrodes on the edges of the screen measure changes in the current and can thus define the location of the disruption.
2. Resistive touch screens : Its composed of many layers. The most important are the two electrically conductive layer separated by a small distance. When you touch on it, the two metallic layers become connected at that point.This results in the change in the current and computer locates the point of contact.
   
3. Acoustic pulse recognition : It makes you of piezoelectric transducers. They "hear" sound waves caused by the user's touch. Sensors in the edges of the screen measure the amount of time it takes for the pulse to reach the edge, and can then calculate the location of the touch.

There are many other type of touch screens too like surface acoustic wave, optical imaging, self capacitance etc. Please feel free to explore the web...:)

The mobile touch screens what we use everyday uses 'Capacitive touch screens' as they are light and inexpensive. But there is a problem....!! The material used in the manufacture of these screens i.e, ITO (indium tin oxide) is very rare. There are only few deposit of indium anywhere in the world. So thinking of the future, scientists are looking for an alternative for ITO.

Now the updated news in the touch screens technology is that the researchers at Fraunhofer have come up with an alternative to ITO which is as efficient as ITO also cheaper ..!!

Its main components are carbon nanotubes and low-cost polymers. This new electrode foil is composed of two layers. One is the carrier, a thin foil made of inexpensive polyethylenterephthalate PET used for making plastic bottles. Then a mixture of carbon-nanotubes and electrically conducting polymers is added that is applied to the PET as a solution and forms a thin film when it dries.

So now you know about a technology and tell others and make yourself look intelligent..:) So see you when something significant happens in the world of science n technology...:)

Visualising the invisible - a 'CSI' tool

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"This world is so beautiful..!",its just one face of this world. Another face is so horrible..!, consisting of murders,rapes,robberies,cruelty and lots more. We all have so much adjusted to this other horrible face that we find those very interesting and enjoyable ....! Don't we..?

Who doesn't love watching serials like CSI, Prison Break, Dexter etc...?? We enjoy them so much. There are cops, chases, shooting.... and lot more to spice them up. But unfortunately those are not only limited to our tv screens, they happen for real...:( But do you now the these crimes are busted..? How do cops find blood spots which aren't visible to naked eye..? Well, you will know it in just a moment...:)

The technique used currently is called the 'Luminol test' .......

• Even after a crime scene is completely cleaned, tiny particles of blood or other body fluids will cling to the that place for years.
• When 'luminol' is sprayed on the scene, the luminol reacts with these particles producing visible light photons.

So now, this method has some disadvantages...!

• is potentially toxic
• has been reported to dilute blood solutions below DNA detection limits
• can smear informative blood spatter patterns
• can provide false positive results.

"Necessity is the mother of inventions...!" So researchers have overcome these by inventing a new CSI tool....! A camera, which can take the pictures of those invisible evidences such as blood stains and body fluids.

• It captures hundreds of images in a few seconds
• it illuminates subjects with pulses of invisible infrared light waves.
• photos are taken through special filters, which block out particular wavelengths, allowing certain chemical components to stand out from their surroundings.

• The camera detects blood diluted to as little as one part blood in 100 parts water...!
• It has the ability to distinguish between between blood, household bleach, rust, soda pop, and coffee....!

Looks like a perfect tool for the CSI team isn't it....?? Will it replace the traditional 'luminol' test..????? Well, lets wait n see...till then enjoy the serials...:)

Dark matter and dark energy

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Its still a mystery...!! Nobody knows what dark matter and dark energy is. All we know is, its a matter which we can not see. Its the glue that holds this entire universe together...! So scientists are trying to capture and study a dark matter particle but have not succeeded yet.






I did not know much about the dark matter and as everybody else I went to explore the internet..:) I got these very interesting videos on dark matter that I thought are worth sharing and spreading.



I think there is no point in me writing a whole article on what I know about regarding dark matter or dark energy...as our mind grasps something when we watch than we read it...:) So watch these videos and get yourself a little bit of knowledge about us and our universe.

Marcedes Biome - The Best or Nothing

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K....after a long time........... :) This mind blowing concept is from Mercedes. When I first came to know about this concept, it really got me into thinking...! because, its that strange...!! But, if it becomes a reality.....then, its going to be a revolution in automobile industry. Let me first tell you what this concept is all about and then let yourself think, to what extent is the possibility of this concept becoming a reality.

We are well aware that we can 'grow' vegetables or fruits. Now think of a car that you can 'grow' like a vegetable or fruit...!! I know it seems more alien and strange than we can even imagine.....:) But this is the concept of Mercedes...'A lab grown Mercedes car'......!!!


I know... You are thinking, 'its impossible'.... but keeping in the mind the saying "nothing is impossible" Mercedes has come up with this concept and they have even officially announced this concept at Los Angeles auto show.

So some 'things' you should know about this concept car.....

• This car is grown from a material called 'BioFibre' . Its lighter than plastic and stronger than steel.
• As one would expect, this material 'BioFibre' currently doesn't exist..!!
• This car would run on some sort of fuel called 'BioNectar4534'.
• Again to our disappointment, 'BioNectar4534' also non existing...:(
• The name of the car is Biome , and would be completely biodegradable and would produce no harmful emissions.

This dream of having such a car is not going to be a reality anytime soon. But lets hope it happens. and lets not forget the saying " Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you'll land among the stars."

A journey into the world of dreams

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"Inception" .......... wait, have started dreaming about the film..??..:) This is one movie, which left people dreaming about dreams. It made many of us fascinated in dreams...... ya ya.. I know its not a movie review blog..:p Am here to show you a sneak peak into the world of dreams.......!!

So.. to start with ... What is dream...??
To tell you a definition, its very simple...Dream is succession of images, memories, sounds or emotions that mind experience when we are asleep.

Why do we dream....? This one is a difficult one....! Because there is no unique answer or explanation for this question..! I would like to introduce you to some of the major theories which explain the above question

1. Freud's theory :

This theory is one of the strongest till now.... According to the theory,

• dreams depend on your ongoing desires and previous day's activities.
• Wishes that were there in our heart even since childhood may get transformed into a dream. In fact he believed every dream is somehow related to one's childhood.
• The interesting thing about this theory is that ...it says, nothing is made up during the dream . Its all predefined..! I mean these are all results of biological reactions, your hidden or unfulfilled desires, personal experiences etc...!
• So.. To sum up, you dream when a wish of yours which is, will or can not be fulfilled gets deep into your mind instead of being discarded.

2. Jung's Theory :

Jung kind of disagrees with Freud and presents his own new theory on dreams.....

• Freud believed we can't interpret dreams.... but Jung said we can...!!
• Jung gave a method to interpret them using the series of correlation.
• Don't know what it is...?? Read the next points.....
• Series correlation is a process of processing and analyzing the dream over the time.
• Take all your related dreams and images from the same. Try to combine all these images to create a new bigger dream. Now try to think and relate it to any of your real life situations. Thus from this info a physical action that could be can be extracted.

3. Cayce's Theory :

Its a kind of really twisted theory...:)

• Cayce said dreams are your bodies way of building a better you..! i.e, mentally, physically a bettor person.
• Its a way of tuning you, to yours maximum potential. It can help solve any of your problems...!..." Really..?? How..? " ....following points explain it....
• By interpreting dreams..... But to interpret them you have to know your mind inside out...! You have to study yourself and and become an expert in yourself...!
• After that you will be able to know what your dreams mean and will help you in building a new you..... may be a version 2.0...:)

4. Evan's Theory :

• During our REM sleep.... brain doesn't sleep and it will sort and re-organize the whole our memories.
• It will bring out everything from deep inside your memory an d scan them and reorganize them.
• So according to this theory, dream is nothing but a moment, those memories and information being scanned.
• Actually FYI, brain re-organizing our memories is recently proved scientifically..!! See Here
  

There are many more theories than you can count.... since its a sneak peak, I have provided only major four. Please be free to explore the internet...:)

Below, I have collected some amazing or interesting facts regarding dreams.....

1. We forget 90% of the dreams.
2. Everybody dreams.
   
3. In our lifetime, we may spend about 6 years dreaming...!!
4. Blind people dream too.
5. If you are snoring, you can not be dreaming.
6. Its proven that our brain waves are more active when we are dreaming than when we are awake.
7. We only dream of what we know.
8. Not everybody dreams in colour.
9. Dreams are not about what they are about.
10. You are paralyzed when you are sleeping.
11. External stimuli affect your dream.

Again these very little what I collected...:) Even I am knew to 'Dream' even if am dreaming every night...:) So please be free to share your knowledge ....:)

Antimatter - Its finally captured...!

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Have you read 'Angels and Demons'...? If you have, then you would know what an antimatter is and how tricky, difficult it is to store it. ( If you haven't yet read it...please do read.Its an awesome novel..:) ) Anyway, in that novel they do store antimatter but it was impossible to store it in reality then. But science has advanced so much that, scientists have figured out a way to store antimatter and they are successful in their effort..!! Its 1st time in the history of science that an antimatter is stored for such a long duration of time that it can be studied..!!

For those who don't know what an antimatter is.... please refer HERE

This historic accomplishment is a result of a long term effort by an international collaboration at CERN called the ALPHA collaboration ( an international team of scientists working at CERN, European Organization for Nuclear Research near Geneva, Switzerland and many others. )


History of antimatter dates back to 1928 when Paul Dirac predicted the theoretical existence of antimatter. In 1932, Carl Anderson found the positrons ( anti-electrons) in cosmic ray debris. In 1995, at Berkeley lab first anti protons were created.

But till now what scientists were unable to do was to store the antimatter they created. In one millionth of second the anti matter was created would hit the material wall of accelerator and would annihilate.

But the ALPHA collaboration has made the impossible possible and they have created 'anti hydrogen' ( on contrary to a hydrogen atom which has an electron spinning around a proton, the antihydrogen has a positron spinning around an anti proton ) and they are able to store it long enough to study them - a whopping two tenths of a second..!!!

Am not going into the complete explanation regarding how exactly the antihydrogen is created and stored. You can just look at the pictures here of the set up of the experiment and guess how complex it is...:) But for those who are interested please do refer the article HERE......

Lets discuss where would this discovery lead to......

Will the study of the antimatter be able to solve the mystery behind the creation of the universe...????

You know, when big-bang happened according to the theory, equal amount of matter and antimatter were created. Then why not that matter and antimatter came into contact and annihilated..? Why matter remained and antimatter vanished...?

Jeffrey Hangst of Aarhus University, Denmark, spokesman for the ALPHA collaboration says "For reasons that no one yet understands, nature ruled out antimatter.It is thus very rewarding, and a bit overwhelming, to look at the ALPHA device and know that it contains stable, neutral atoms of antimatter... This inspires us to work that much harder to see if antimatter holds some secret."

So will the study of antimatter solves this mystery...??
Lets wait n see...:)

Racetrack Memory - what is it..??!!

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You may be having the most advanced configuration for your computer but still, I bet sometimes you wish computer to be faster and efficient...:) Well, you may have to wait for another 5 to 7 years.... 'Racetrack memory' is on its way....!!

With Racetrack Memory,

• you can have your computer booted up instantly...!!
  
• Also you can access your HDD at 100,000 times faster than now..!! ( its lightning speed...:) )
  
• Moreover it's 300 times more energy efficient..!!

What more do you want..???
So now you may be thinking ... what is it...???

Stuart Parkin of IBM’s Almaden Research Center came up with a concept of spintroncs-based memory in which the parts dont move instead the information moves. Prof. Mathias Kläui of Switzerland’s EPFL ( École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne ) developed the concept and came up with the Racetrack memory.

Like a videocassette, Racetrack Memory would store data magnetically. Instead of on a moving tape, however, it would be stored on a tiny unmoving nickel-iron nanowire. The bits of information, which are stored in the wire using the spin of electrons rather than an electronic charge, would be moved around at several hundred meters per second, using a spin polarized current. Adjacent bits would be delineated from one another via domain walls with magnetic vortices.
Just to get you an idea of how much faster this could be..., according to EPFL, accessing these nanowires is like reading an entire VHS tape in less than a second..!! They are planning to embed millions or even billions of such nanowires on the chip...!! ( got the idea..?...:) )

But before it hits the consumer market, there are lots of difficulties to be overcome. Such as...
Microscopic imperfections in the crystal structure of the wires, which led to the magnetic domains becoming “stuck,” and it results in a performance equal to current HDDs'.

Lets hope it hits the market soon and days of booting up our computers instantly are not far...:)

What does brain do when you are asleep...???

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Jessica D. Payne of the University of Notre Dame and Elizabeth A. Kensinger of Boston College have studied the brain functioning when the person is sleeping and what they came up with is pretty interesting.

First let me tell you a fun fact..... as humans, we spend 1/3rd of our lives asleep...!

Now if you are thinking, "oh my god...! am I wasting so much of my precious time sleeping..??!!"...then you are wrong...! If we need that much sleep, then it has to have some reason right..? That's what Payne and Elizabeth thought and they came to know the truth behind this.

So according to their study... sleep makes our memories stronger...!! This may be known to many... like as my mom used to say.."you need a good sleep before the exam so that you can remember whatever you have studied easily.." But even if it is a fact there was no proof..! and that's what I used to ask my mom..:) But it has now...

• When we sleep, brain doesn't sleep.
• It make sour memories stronger.
• It recognizes, organizes and restructures our whole memory.
• And this is what makes people come up with new ideas and it make you see things in a different angle.
• The study uncovered a fact that the person tends to stick to the most emotional part of the memory. For example, if someone is shown a scene with an emotional object, such as a wrecked car, in the foreground, they're more likely to remember the emotional object than, say, the palm trees in the background—particularly if they're tested after a night of sleep.
• They have measred the brain activity during sleep and discovered that regions of the brain involved with emotion and memory consolidation are active.

Payne says "I give myself an eight-hour sleep opportunity every night. I never used to do that—until I started seeing my data," also "We can get away with less sleep, but it has a profound effect on our cognitive abilities" she adds.

So sleep well and think well....:)

Turning trees into street lights...!

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This is one discovery, when properly developed and employed, is going to change the whole world.
This will provide one revolutionary solution for controlling pollution and also to save a significant amount of power...!! Its another magic of nano technology...:)

Now a days there is a very large increase in cutting down trees for some construction or road widening purposes. This decrease in no. of trees is as everybody knows, is very dangerous. Trees provide us oxygen to live and we are killing them. How foolish are we...??!!! don't you think...?

This motivated Post-doctor Yen-Hsun Su of Research Center for Applied Science (RCAS), Academia Sinica, Taiwan, to think of this revolutionary idea and also making it a reality...!!

This brilliant discovery is using gold nanoparticles to induce luminescence in leaves...!!!

How is it possible.....??

well, Yen-Hsun Su implanted gold nanoparticles into Bacopa caroliniana plants and found that, when exposed to high wavelength ultraviolet light, the gold nanoparticles can produce a blue-violet fluorescence that triggers a red emission of the surrounding chlorophyll.

Assistant Prof. Shih-Hui Chang of Institute of Electro-Optical Science and Engineering, upon learning the discovery said,"Light emitting diode (LED) has replaced traditional light source in many display panels and street lights on the road. A lot of light emitting diode, especially white light emitting diode, uses phosphor powder to stimulate light of different wavelengths. However, phosphor powder is highly toxic and its price is expensive. As a result, Dr. Yen-Hsun Wu had the idea to discover a method which is less toxic to replace phosphor powder which can harm human bodies and cause environmental pollution"


In an interview with the 'Chemistry World' Yen-Hsun Su stated "In the future, bio-LED could be used to make roadside trees luminescent at night. This will save energy and absorb CO2 as the bio-LED luminescence will cause the chloroplast to conduct photosynthesis,"

The invention needs to be developed a lot. But anyway, I think its a billion dollar idea...! Lets hope the days of us seeing the roadside trees illuminating, are not far...:)

Self cloning lizard found...!!

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Image credit: L. Lee Grismer.

I got really curious and could not wait telling you people, when I heard about this news....:)

A new lizard which was unknown to the world of biology till now, is found in Vietnam.

You may thinking how was this lizard found...actually its like story...:)

This lizard is not rare in the region where it is found. Its known as a restaurant food item in that region i.e, southwestern Vietnam.

One day the 'hero' of our story Ngo Van Tri ( the man who found the lizard ) from Vietnam Academy of Science and Technology, had been to a restaurant in Ba Ria-Vung Tau Province. There these lizards were kept alive in a tank. He saw these lizards and to his amazement, he noticed all the individuals looked identical...! He immediately sent some photographs of those to his colleague Grismer and his PhD student son Jesse.

The Grismers identified the lizard as probably belonging to the Leiolepis genus, but in this genus males and females have different coloration, and the photographs showed only males. This made them suspect... that this lizard may belong to a whole new species..!

Filled with excitement Grismers hurried and flew to Ho Chi Minh City. He called the restaurant owner and requested him to keep the lizards alive and not to sell to any body till he reach there.
It took 8 long hours for Grismers to reach the restaurant but that restaurant owner had already sold all the lizards...!!

But the scientists didn't give up. They searched other restaurants and also many school children helped to find the lizards in the wild. Finally they succeeded in finding around 70 lizards and all were females.

The lizard is named as Leiolepis ngovantrii. According to the scientists, Leiolepis ngovantrii may be a hybrid of two related species of maternal and paternal lizards that thrive in the separate habitats.They tested its mitochondrial DNA, and found that the maternal species as L. guttata.
The paternal species is still unknown.

Thus our story behind finding the self cloning lizard comes to an end...:)

Leiolepis ngovantrii is not the only one that reproduces through cloning, since around one percent of lizard species reproduce with no contribution from males, by a process known as parthenogenesis (from the Greek for virgin birth). In this process the ovum contains a full complement of chromosomes and develops into an embryo without being fertilized. Parthenogenesis also occurs, but rarely, in fish and invertebrates, especially insects such as aphids, and has been artificially induced in mice and other species.